


Dawn

by Nununununu



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Absent Characters, Character Study, Choices, Don't copy to another site, Hope, Identity Issues, Introspection, M/M, Memory Issues, Morally Ambiguous Character, Past Brainwashing, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:27:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24098056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nununununu/pseuds/Nununununu
Summary: He woke in a cemetery.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 5
Kudos: 14
Collections: Villain of My Own Story Exchange 2020





	Dawn

**Author's Note:**

  * For [catsinouterspace](https://archiveofourown.org/users/catsinouterspace/gifts).



> Bucky introspection (includes deliberate past/present tense changing). Trigger warning for what can be read as brief, non-detailed suicidal ideation.
> 
> (Originally posted 23/05; updated for author reveals).

He woke in a cemetery.

Waking was different from coming out of cryo. There was wet against his shoulder and cheek; dampness on the grass. The sound of birds. They sounded – alien, strange. Perhaps they were something he hadn’t heard for a long time. Perhaps they were something he had heard but not noticed. Why would birds ever be relevant to a mission?

He woke with the impression of a face, an oval, an outline, with features he couldn’t see. Fair hair and a voice saying –

He woke in a cemetery. What was this, waking? There was no one standing over him, no orders to receive.

Perhaps he could give himself his own orders. He pushed himself up from the damp grass and sat, legs folded, hands on his knees. Part of him wanted – wanted! – to draw his knees up to his chest, but such a position had always been deemed unacceptable. Unacceptable to who?

To himself? Who was that? Knees up, arms around them – what was he trying to hide?

What did that mean, ‘he’?

The cemetery was quiet, except for the sounds of the birds. Were they angry, disturbed by his presence? Oblivious to it? If he caught one, he could –

Why would he catch one. Someone had tried to catch him once, when he fell. Why had he been falling?

He had always been falling –

No.

Someone had caught him once – Steve. That name. That name he had seen in the Smithsonian, along with the picture of the man who –

And the picture of the man who had not been –

Him. Who was this ‘him’? The name attached – not Steve, but the other one –

His thoughts were tangled. He wasn’t – He felt unused to having them, like they pulled unpleasantly at parts of his brain that were –

Parts of his brain were no longer working, he knew that much. Perhaps –

If he was out of cryo for long enough, would they start working again? He was thinking now, wasn’t he, however – however confused. Was this confused?

Yes, he was confused. That was – That was something. An emotion that was his. And these thoughts –

He felt determined to have them. To look at the grass beneath his fingers – mismatched, flesh on one side and the other metal – which of these options was wrong?

Were they both wrong?

No. No. He knew the answer. And he was determined to have these thoughts, however confused. They were his. _His_. Steve. Steve, the man on the bridge, on the helicarrier, the man who claimed to have been his friend –

Steve was his, too.

Did that mean he was Steve’s? He didn’t know.

He didn’t know. The birds were –

Nice. He liked them? Did he like anything? But the birdsong was – calming. Another emotion. Something else he hadn’t felt in –

Since when?

He was thirsty. Another new realisation; something else he was unused to noticing about himself. He was thirsty, his throat aching, lips dry and cracked. He had slept outside all night here in the cemetery, among headstones that –

Did he know these names?

Had he known them? Had he come here because –

Were they names, ones he had seen in the Smithsonian? Alongside those of Captain America, of _Steve_ , of Bucky Bar–

No. He couldn’t be that name yet. He couldn’t be ‘Bucky’ yet. There was –

Was there something? A kernel, deep down inside him, down so deep the ice and the electricity and all of the – everything. Everything they had done to him.

Everything he had done.

Was there a kernel deep down inside him, a seed, a root. Something that was once Bucky. Something that could –

Something that could _become_ Bucky. With enough time. If he collected enough fragments, enough broken pieces, if he found some way, some means of attempting to stitch them back together –

Could he become _himself_? Changed yes, not the same, never the same given what he – they – _he_ had done, but –

Perhaps. Perhaps he could become an echo of Bucky. Bucky but – also something else.

Maybe –

Maybe Steve would know. Yes.

Steve will know.

He pushes himself to his feet and remembers plunging down into the water. Standing, he recalls falling that first time, flashes of it. Of jumping the second time, of _choosing_ to fall. Of following Steve.

Steve had been there the first time too, hadn’t he. The second time had been water; the first time had been ice. Snow.

He had frozen. He had been frozen. He had nearly died. Over and over and over.

It’s like most of him has been dead all this time. Should have been dead. The things he’s done –

Although. Steve would say –

The things he was _made_ to do.

That doesn’t mean it’s forgivable. He stands up amongst the grass and the graves, and lets himself stumble, just once. His body doesn’t feel as if it has been capable of stumbling, not in a long time. Of hesitating. Of not acting. Of not –

What _did_ his hands used to do, back before all the fighting? There was fighting too, death, pain – back before he was –

Taken. Is that the word?

What happened _before_ the fighting that took place before the first time he fell?

“The end of the line –”

What had happened at the start of it?

Steve had – Steve had _wanted_ to fight. He had been smaller then, so small. How had he been so small? His memory must be broken in that way too. But –

But that flash of Steve, in different clothes, in a different time, like in the pictures in the museum –

Photos. They were not pictures, but photos. And that flash of Steve, fair hair in his eyes, the top of his head barely chin height on – on Bucky. Determination in his gaze. Bucky –

Bucky leaving. Why had he left Steve? To go and fight. And Steve had wanted to fight too. So fighting –

Fighting must be a _good_ thing, in a sense. Fighting for – for the right thing. How? He has been –

He has been fighting for so long. ‘Shaping the century’. Shaping it in a way that – that Steve wouldn’t want. That _he_ –

That _he_ hadn’t wanted. Didn’t want. That hadn’t been his part. Whatever they had told him – whatever Alexander Pierce had told him – and this is another name he won’t _can’t_ wants to forget –

It had been wrong.

How can the two reconcile with each other? Fighting that is ‘good’ and that which is ‘bad’. How can he reconcile with Steve?

How can he reconcile with himself?

Steve will know.

He needs to find Steve. He’s not sure – not sure if Steve will want to see him. Even after he saved Steve, even after he failed to complete his mission –

No. He _didn’t_ fail. His mission is to –

To –

To _protect_ Steve. Bucky’s. Bucky’s own self-appointed mission, back so very long ago – Bucky’s mission had been to protect Steve. And Steve had protected Bucky. And together they had fought.

He stands straighter. Walks straighter. Not like – Not like the other one, the one they made him into. Not like the Solider. But perhaps –

Perhaps he walks a little like Bucky. Like _himself_ , whoever that is, whoever that might become, mixed with the contents of that kernel; with the deep down remaining scraps inside him that are possibly Bucky. Bucky and himself.

Perhaps in the future stitched into something more like one.

He walks and licks his lips and goes to find water. To drink. To replenish this body that has for so long been only a weapon. To replenish himself. He leaves the cemetery behind him – it is never really behind him, is it; there are other cemeteries, other places, other marked and unmarked graves. But –

He leaves the cemetery behind him. Walks, listens to the bird song and plans to find water. This is – these simple things –

In this moment, he thinks he might almost be feeling a kind of peace. He is out of cryo. He has woken up in the damp grass and there is no one shouting at him, no one hurting him. No one to hurt.

No one giving him orders.

“To the end –”

There is a line out there. A line leading him out of the past, out of the present, to – to the future. A line, leading him to the fair haired man. To his –

To his Steve.

He’s going to find Steve.


End file.
